I'm Lev Grossman I wrote the cover story
this month for Vanity Fair about Star
Wars people talk a lot about the
connections between the new Star Wars
trilogy and the old ones but what
interests me even more is the
differences between the disney version
and a Lucasfilm program
the main difference for me is the old
views were kind of a fairy tale in a way
I mean they went to some very dark
places well we kind of thought at the
end of Return of the Jedi that it was
happily ever after for the rebellion and
for Han and Leia what we discover in the
new movies is it's not quite that kind
of a fairy tale things get a little more
complex a little darker maybe even a
more little more realistic when Lucas
made the movies in the 1970s it was
really kind of an antidote to a lot of
the disillusionment that was happening
they were coming off the Vietnam War
they were coming off of Watergate they
were coming off a lot of really great
but depressing 1970s cinema Lucas said
in interviews he wanted to rebuild
optimism and in many ways that's the
tone of the in additional trilogy the
new ones are more complicated than that
I think they come from a less
disenchanted place but they are also a
little less wide-eyed the old movies
were so much about this idea of
restoring the Old Republic over a
thousand generations the Jedi Knights
were the guardians of peace of justice
you don't hear that much about it in
many movies it's what you hear about is
younger people wondering whether they
can repair the damage of the past and
build something new that's gonna last
[Music]
Lucas kind of in a wonderful way that I
love he's kind of Moony and romantic he
has these ideas about how life is gonna
pan out for him and in a funny way they
do and then a funny way they don't but
he finishes the movies looking really
happy it's not bittersweet for him
really he he does what he needs to do
with Rea kind of wonder if it's gonna go
in that direction necessarily in the new
movies we kind of have a loop figure in
Rey she is on a desert planet she's
young she's an orphan and I would have
been wasting my family
they'll be back but things are much
rougher for Rey she doesn't have that
kind of family support system that Luke
had she's much angrier she's not trying
to join the resistance or anything like
that she is just trying to get by when
the movie starts so even more than Luke
she kind of starts at nothing and she
has to kind of build herself up piece by
piece when you look at the later Luke he
is a guy who is very disillusioned and
really struggling with a kind of midlife
crisis that someone like obi-wan never
really had to confront
Luke and obi-wan are there kind of
emblematic of the differences between
the trilogy's because obi-wan his
Padawan obviously goes massively off the
rails but he deals with it and he
retreats to the desert and he's a hermit
and he's meditating for 20 years or
however long it is and then when Luke
sort of comes of age he's ready to kind
of guide him Luke has the same thing
happened he has a father one who turns
to the dark side in kylo Ren but he
doesn't recover from it in that same way
he is so upset and so ashamed that he
has to hide himself away he isn't there
for Rey in that way that obi-wan is for
Lou Rey has to go find him and kind of
twist his arm to get him to train her
and keep the Jedi Order going so when
you have Luke suffering this terrible
loss he doesn't bounce back from it as
easily audience expect him to kind of
wrestle internally with this problem in
a little more of a challenging way and
he does he has to work it through in
this really dark psychological way that
obi-wan never really had to
Darth Vader was cool he was so cool all
the time name is like James Bond you
know nothing ruffled him things went
wrong he just kind of kept on going
whereas kylo Ren he's just he's emo you
know he has tantrums you can see this
psychological struggle working through
him it makes him feel you know it's so
much more present emotionally they also
in some ways more scary because he could
really go off and just do anything at
any time one of the big differences
between kylo Ren and Darth Vader is
Darth Vader keeps his mask on and as a
result he's kind of a super villain you
know he feels a little bit like
something out of a comic book when kylo
Ren takes his mask off he realized that
there's a human being who's doing these
terrible things you know you see his
face you see the emotion on it he makes
fascism feel like much more of a real
living thing like something we should
really think about and worry about it
because it's sort of all around us
probably the biggest change for me is
the difference between the resistance
and the rebellion I have placed
information vital to the survival of the
rebellion into the memory systems of
this r2 unit my father will know how to
retrieve it the rebellion were always
trying to bring back that old Republic
which was super super gray and there was
this enormous feeling of nostalgia which
is a big Lucas theme if you look at
American Graffiti that's just a
nostalgia fest and in Star Wars it's
kind of the same when we get to force
awakens everything has changed because
the rebellion won and they brought back
the Old Republic and it didn't work it
was kind of politically passive and
myopic and it allowed the first-order to
rise up again nostalgia has completely
gone out of the movies and it's much
more about looking forward and assessing
the mistakes of the past and learning
from them and then building something
new that hopefully will last
certainly the rise of populism worldwide
and it's kind of pseudo fascist feel is
very well reflected in the rise of the
first-order there's also this sense that
the older generation relate the
generation of the original Star Wars
they kind of screwed up particularly in
the area of climate change but in lots
of ways we made so many mistakes and
we're now looking to our children to
do better and basically save the planet
from our terrible screw-ups and that's
kind of the position that the younger
characters in the new trilogy are in I
mean you got ahead of the fascists they
stay on message it is always the same if
anybody is kind of carrying the torch
for nostalgia it's the first-order they
are the ones now talking about restoring
the past and making things great again
the way they were under the empire but
hopefully they will fail
well kylo ren's very different from
Darth Vader as a character as for the
kind of political apparatus around him
it's very much the same they even used
the same tactics militarily which is
kind of a huge mistake you would think
they would have learned their lesson
after losing to Death Star's now they've
lost Starkiller base as well I'm hoping
they come up with some new way to try to
extinguish everything good at the galaxy
and at the same time I hope it doesn't
work one thing I think Abrams did
incredibly right was he got back into
that thing that Luke his hand of
shooting on location which has this
credible effect of making everything
feel super real in the first film force
awakens they were working so hard to
build that sense in that's is this a
Star Wars movie that you can make a Star
Wars movie without Lukas without Lukas
film which is not something that
everybody was convinced of yet they
worked so hard in some cases probably
too hard to build that sense of a
connection to the old movies like in
having basically a cantina in the new
movie
one thing Abrams said about the way that
he directed the rise of Skywalker is
that it was different from how he did
force awakens he felt freer to do his
kind of Star Wars and to shoot things
his way and to kind of leave behind in
some ways that legacy that George Lucas
left behind which was so amazing which
everything is built on and yet at some
point he'd had to kind of decide to be
himself as a director and that is
something we'll definitely see in rise
of Skywalker
the pace at which Disney puts out new
song which material is so much faster
than Lucasfilm
did I mean it was a filming year for
five years now I think they were testing
to some extent will people experience
star wars fatigue and the answer was
almost no solo as it turned out was kind
of a bridge too far
I think Disney was testing whether they
could make Star Wars movies the same way
they make Marvel movies which is just
spinning them off around different
characters at a huge break and the
result of the experiment is you can't I
think the difference is between the old
movies and the new one they're partly
about people they struggle with in
themselves more than A's to kylo Ren
struggles to stay dark he struggles with
the goodness in himself even more than
Luke's struggle to resist the dark side
at the same time that fairy tale kind of
spell has been broken that sense that we
used to have that everything was gonna
be okay
everything was gonna be happily ever
after we don't know that now for some
reason and I don't know if it's what's
happening in the world or if what's
happened in media has has changed things
we're certainly used to very very dark
stuff post the wire post sopranos we're
used to seeing dark endings on screen
for whatever reason as an audience we
won't sit still for that fairy tale
ending the way we used to we expect
things to be bittersweet and that for
good or ill is what the new Star Wars
movies deliver and it makes them feel
like they belong to this particular
moment
you